Chairman
of the Anti-Corruption Commission Ghulam Rahman has said the graft watchdog
which, not long ago, used to send a chill down the spine of the corrupt has now
been reduced to a toothless tigers.
Addressing a press briefing yesterday at the ACC office in the city, the
anti-graft body chief said the tiger still had its claws. "Although",
he added, "efforts are there to destroy the claws too."
He favoured reforms in the ACC, but said that he would resist any attempt to
curb the independence of the ACC in the name of reforms.
Rahman, who succeeded Gen (retd) Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury as ACC chief also said
that corruption could not be curbed due to weakness in the judicial system.
"If the judicial system is not reformed, it will not be possible to wipe
out corruption," the ACC chief told the press briefing.Underscoring the need for reforming the ACC, he said that
the present government, which assumed power pledging to curb corruption had
initiated the process of the reform.
Existing
rules say that ACC can have the access to any information of the government for
its investigation but the committee's recommendations restricts ACC to have
such information, he added.
Narrating different types of corruption in the country, he said that high level
corruption was being conducted under the political shelter.